Monday 24th August 2015

My son Olie and I arrived first thing at Holidays Afloat at Brooklyn on the Hawesbury river for our 10 day fishing adventure. I have a lot of experience deep sea fishing out of Sydney but none whatsoever on the Hawkesbury.

The little cabin cruiser we hired, Victoria, can sleep four but is perfect for the two of us. We loaded up our provisions and set off full of anticipation. We had asked every local who would talk to us and read every blog we could find about how to fish the area but we were very aware that we are complete novices.

Under the rail bridge we went, then past Brooklyn proper and anchored just off Challenger Head on an incoming tide. Down went a whole squid on a 6/0 hook for mulloway or jew fish. Then a gang-hooked pilchard mid-water on a ballon. The two lighter rods were pater noster rigged with pilchard and squid.

Within half an hour of fishing; success ! My son was into a beautiful one plus metre shovel noise shark, this is easier than the deep sea fishing out of Sydney that I am used to I thought erroneously !

After some spaghetti bolognaise for lunch we headed down into America Bay which looked particularly inviting but proved fish-less. We moved on to Refuge Bay where we planned to stay the night. We had also heard that a very good jew fish had been caught here the night before. This time we didn’t anchor but tied up to one of the public moorings available. By now the weather had turned pretty windy and rainy so we set out a couple of baits with the ratchets on so we would hear if anything took.

I made us steak and chips for dinner and then we had a backgammon session which left me with mixed feelings, either I am a very good teacher or I suck because I was solidly beaten. Anyway the holiday is still young and there are many more games to come.